Montana - Getting There

On Sunday, we headed to Montana! Mr. Harvey, my dad's good friend, allowed us to use his private plane to go up there in. It was so nice to get to the airport and just leave. We didn't have to go through security or wait for the plane to get ready. So nice!

We were about an hour and a half into the flight, when the pilot came over the intercom and said we were landing in Wichita, Kansas. Apparently, there were engine problems...yes, engine problems on a month old plane. To say we were freaking out is a tad bit of an understatement. Luckily, Wichita is actually where the plane was built and they have a repair facility, so we were right where we needed to be!

In front of the plane (a Cessna CJ3) at the Cessna Repair Facility in Wichita.
Stranded in Wichita. Loving family togetherness!

Since we were going to be there for a while, we convinced the staff at the airport to take us on a tour of the repair facility. Cameras weren't allowed (for obvious reasons), but we learned a lot! Case in point:

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  The most common injury to a Cessna is caused by golf carts. Seriously! Apparently, when people bring golf carts full of luggage up to the plane, they forget to put the brakes on! Can you imagine?


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  The largest plane we saw in the repair facility starts at $12 million and can fly coast to coast in 4 hours. It costs $45,000 to fill up...I won't be making that trip anytime soon.


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  Cessna is currently transitioning to a new accounting software (yes, I talked shop while on vacation). Their current system is PRE-DOS. I don't even know where to start on that....They did state that for the cost of the new system, they could build a brand new hangar complete with everything needed to make major repairs on jets.

After the tour, we headed to a little mom-and-pop to grab some lunch. We brought the average age down by about 40 years....

Daddy laughing about our luck already.

When we got back, they said that even though they couldn't determine why the sensor was going off, we were safe to fly. So, off we went!

View from the plane

We landed in Billings about 4:45 pm. It was a sight! We had a GMC Yukon Denali waiting for us at the airport. It regularly seats seven, but with all our luggage, it only seated 4. Cramped quarters!

Some pics of our ride to Absarokee...

The town we stayed in, Absarokee, is about 50 minutes from Billings. I'm guessing it was about the size of Eupora. We rented a house from a pair of sisters to stay the week in. It was cute and suited our needs, although I thought Daddy was going to have a heart attack with the lack of AC in the house. (It was about 80 degrees during the day and no humidity, but we're all used to sleeping in a really cold room.)

We freshened up and headed to a nice dinner in Red Lodge (about 45 minutes from Absarokee) at Carbon County Steakhouse. Since we didn't have flights back home yet, Daddy got on his iPad during dinner to determine how exactly we were going to get home. We even recommended renting an RV and driving back - unfortunately, they were sold out!

Me and Cheyenne at dinner

Everybody at dinner

That night, I'm pretty sure we all slept like babies. We were super excited to get this vacation started!

Stay tuned!